The modern sporting rifle, based on the AR-15 platform, is widely misunderstood. Why? Confusion exists because while these rifles may cosmetically look like military rifles, they do not function the same way.

There is a tremendous amount of misinformation surrounding the issue of so-called "assault weapons." What has erroneously been termed an "assault weapon" is a semi-automatic firearm (Modern Sporting Rifle) that fires just one bullet with each pull of the trigger (versus a fully automatic firearm -- machine gun -- which continues to shoot until the trigger is released).